However, because Jews generally were forbidden by the Third Commandment to pronounce the sacred name, the vowels of Adonai (literally 'my lords') were normally inserted between its consonants, resulting in the name 'Jehovah'. Reflecting the same taboo, the earlier English translations of the Bible replaced the name with the phrase 'the LORD'. Because Jesus' followers routinely called him adon ('boss', 'lord', which translated into the gospels' Greek as kurios), the two titles became confused in English, to the point where it became unclear whether the phrase 'the LORD' was referring to Jesus or to Yahweh.

In the 19th century, German scholar Wilhelm Gesenius suggested that the tetragrammaton (יְהֹוָה) be vowelized as יַהְוֶה, corresponding to the romanization "Yahweh."

Sources

Armstrong, K., The Battle for God (Harper Perennial, 2000)

Burrows, M., The Dead Sea Scrolls (Secker & Warburg, 1956)

Cruden, A., Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testaments (Lutterworth, 1930)